Welcome to the Southern Illinois Trauma Center

The first Level I trauma center in the region, the Southern Illinois Trauma Center (SITC), serves an 18-county region of west central and southern Illinois with Level I trauma care. Initially a partnership of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Memorial Medical Center, and St. John’s Hospital, the SITC was approved by the Illinois Department of Public Health and began operations in July 1999 under the leadership of its first medical director, Dr. William (Bill) Schiller. The SITC, along with strong regional EMS, hospital and community partners, rapidly demonstrated the value and feasibility of a regional southern Illinois Level I Trauma Center. For 15 years, the SITC hospital site alternated annually between St. John’s Hospital and Memorial Medical Center. Today the SITC has a permanent home at Memorial Medical Center.

Trauma centers treat the most serious and complex combinations of injuries, those from which a person may be at risk of loss of life or limb. The SITC follows international guidelines for a Level I trauma center as established by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma. Thus, the SITC provides resources for all areas of trauma care, from prevention, through emergency department and hospital treatment, and into rehabilitation. After providing initial emergency evaluation, the SITC trauma team continues its direct involvement, providing advanced critical care, specialized medical services, and outpatient care. Further information on trauma centers and trauma systems can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/traumacare.

Following Dr. Schiller’s retirement in 2002, Dr. John Fortune led the SITC until 2004. Dr. John Sutyak, who has worked fulltime with the SITC since 2001, is the current medical director, a position he has held since 2004. The SITC faculty includes three additional fulltime SIU trauma/critical care surgeons: Dr. Christopher Wohltmann, Dr. Jarrod Wall, and Dr. Adam Reid. All SITC surgeons are diplomats of the American Board of Surgery in both General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. Several SITC surgeons also volunteer as Associate Examiners for the American Board of Surgery. SITC surgeons and their families live in the Springfield area, the region they serve. They are personally invested in Southern Illinois through family, schools, athletics, churches, and many other local organizations. Collectively, the four trauma surgeons represent more than 60 combined years of trauma/critical care experience. In recent years trauma surgical care has become closely aligned with critical care or intensive care. All four SITC trauma surgeons have specialized training in both surgical trauma and critical care which means the patients are not only managed in the Emergency Department but beyond to the ICU, hence providing more cohesive care.

The SITC treats about 1,400 patients each year. Our trauma team and the regional system are organized to provide emergency and in-patient treatment as well as follow-up care after hospitalization, specializing in patients with multiple injuries. About 25% of patients seen by the SITC are initially evaluated at another access hospital before transfer for care of their complex injuries.

The SITC also has two TraumaMan® Systems that were recently purchased through a $76,000 grant from Memorial Medical Center. The TraumaMan is an anatomical surgical manikin designed for students to practice a variety of surgical procedures. It was evaluated and approved by the American College of Surgeons in 2001 as an alternative to live non-human models or cadavers for ATLS, the leading Trauma Training Course. The system is now used to train over 30,000 medical professionals each year.

Trauma in the News

Two Springfield trauma centers lead to puzzling 33% increase in trauma cases in 2015
Seconds before impact, Michael McCallister knew he couldn’t avoid the crash and thought to himself while behind the wheel of his pickup truck: “This is gonna hurt.” more...